Main menu

Tag Archives: re-stringing

You will have a promising start to the year when you briefly lead your squash club’s internal leagues due to all of the top 23 players being injured, out of the country on ‘business’, or suffering from the Ebola virus contracted from the staff of the local Liberian restaurant. Later in the year you will have your racket re-strung after using it to fend off a swarm of killer bees during a knock-up with your then girlfriend.

Aquarius (20 January – 19 February)

During a session of your squash club’s weekly round-robin, you will take a hard-fought game off a 16-stone guy who once soundly beat a 9-year old Ramy Ashour back home in Egypt, leaving him in tears. That’s Ramy, not the 16-stone guy. Later in the year, you will discover that the father of the Middle Eastern-looking kid you’ve been regularly thrashing at the same round-robin is a known Taliban leader.

Pisces (20 February – 20 March)

This is the year when every single one of your gambles, both on and off the squash court, will pay off. Actually, no, come to think of it that was last year. Sorry.

Zodiac Signs

Aries (21 March – 19 April)

You will make a special effort to improve your personal grooming. However, you will realise that your new haircut is unsuccessful when the guys at the squash club changing room keep asking if you’ve had brain surgery. On the transport front, when you take your car in for its annual road-worthiness assessment, the only test it passes is the “Isn’t on fire” one.

Taurus (20 April – 20 May)

After you complete a gruelling programme of coaching sessions to improve your focus and hone your killer instincts, a long-term squash opponent and bitter rival suddenly begins to read something into your on-court body language. Then again, it could be the fact that you’ve tied him to a chair on Court Two and are dancing around waving a flick-knife with “Stuck In The Middle With You” playing on your portable sound system.

Gemini (21 May – 20 June)

A quiet year. You will replace your double yellow dot ball.

Cancer (21 June – 22 July)

You will decide that you want to be able to see your feet when taking a shower and start to focus exclusively on your health. You eat less, exercise more and get plenty of sleep. As you become fitter, your stamina, court coverage and reaction times improve dramatically, leading to an upswing in form. As you climb the club squash leagues, you are invited to join the second team at around the same time your sister offers to fix you up with some of the “cute girls” at her gym. You date a series of unsuitable women all of whom turn out to have convictions for assault, develop insomnia and put on two stones. You belatedly realise that your sister has always secretly hated you and will stop at nothing to ruin your life. Nothing.

Leo (23 July – 22 August)

This year all your efforts trying to write the perfect squash-themed novel will finally pay off when you find yourself signing copies in the city centre branch of Barnes & Noble from mid-day until they catch you doing it.

Virgo (23 August – 22 September)

You know that bit in rom-coms where the ridiculously hot girl ends up with the unconventional-looking guy because he really “gets her” and makes her laugh? And you know that girl down at the squash club you’ve been mooning over for the last two years? Yeah, well next year that’s not going to happen.

Libra (23 September – 23 October)

You read that surveys show that people find moving house even more stressful than attending a funeral. When your best squash buddy asks you to help him move, you will decide that there’s only really one option.

Scorpio (24 October – 21 November)

You will decide to lay off the post-match drink for a while when your hangovers move from being merely crippling to plumbing the depths of a howling, nihilistic vortex filled with pure pain and endless death. At least on Tuesdays, anyway.

Sagittarius (22 November – 21 December)

You will finally decide to follow the same principles in your squash-playing life that have helped so many people in their personal and business lives. In other words: Prepare to fail and you’ll always…no, hang on. Don’t fail to prepare and you’ll fail to…no, that’s not right, either. Damn, I had it a minute ago.

Squash Racket Strings

Well, I’m just about old enough (really!) to remember playing with a wooden squash racket – or at least a squash racket with a laminated wood frame. Not only did it have a frame made from ash but, in common with the guitar I was learning to play at the time, it also had natural gut strings made from animal intestines.

Squash Rackets, Guitars and Scientific Research

Now, at the time, I certainly didn’t want to feel instrumental in causing cruelty to animals purely to help my development either as a squash player or a guitarist. In fact, as a scientist (and consequently someone who’s naturally curious), I did carry out some basic research into what was involved in acquiring gut from the appropriate animal(s) and transforming it into racket strings and guitar strings. Without going into details, I decided to play on, my conscience being clear on the animal welfare front, or at least as clear as it could be at the time…

Squash Racket Repair

The approach to repairing squash rackets in those days seemed to vary from the professional (re-stringing and frame repair by a specialist) to the amateur (involving the use of a mind-boggling variety of adhesives and other materials then in domestic use. I personally remember using Araldite, Evo-stik, paper clips (straightened of course), fuse wire and electrical insulation tape to repair my squashrackets, some of which were contributed by my fellow squash players along with bold claims as to their effectiveness.

Racket Skills

So, when I recently came across some footage from 1976 of a squash match involving eight times British Open Squash Champion, Geoff Hunt, using a wooden racket – the memories came flooding back. Here it is, posted on the internet by Hernan Dubourg, himself a nine times ArgentinaNational Squash Champion.

One feature of the match – between Hunt and Pakistan’s Mohibullah Khan – is the length of the rallies. I’ve seen a longer recording from the match which shows many of these lasting for 50 shots or more. Perhaps the footage shows that therackets of the time were just as good as those of the modern era (in terms of the power of shot they could be used to generate) but were not as suited to touch play at the front of the court. Who knows? But let me invite you to just listen to the sound when the squashball is being hit.

I don’t know about you but, as a former wooden squash racket user, it certainly does sound like music to my ears.